The road to Google I/O 2010 (Part I)

 Yup, we know it's been quite some time, but we're here. And to celebrate the fact that Smart Mobile World will be at Google's most important developer event, Google I/O, we want to remember the history of Android, the road that's brought us here, dreaming about what's coming our way in the next couple of days when, if everything goes right, Google will show the next version of Android, FroYo.

For now, let's look back and remember how Android, was born.

It was the year 2005, when Andy Rubin picked up the phone, and called his old friend Larry Page, one of Google’s founders, and asked for a meeting. Years before, Rubin had founded Danger, Inc., famous for giving the world the Danger Hiptop, also known as T-Mobile Sidekick, one of the first phones which allowed people to connect through internet, adopting many of the features previously exclusive only to PDAs. At that time, Google was fighting with tech giants Yahoo! and Lycos to become the most visited website, and Rubin chose Google as the default search engine in the Hiptop, which strengthened Google’s position and made the search engine aware of the impact mobile browsing would have in the future. When Rubin called, the least Page could do was agree to a meeting at Google’s headquarters.

After the Hiptop’s success, Google started thinking about mobile traffic, and opened a lab to research on the best way to leverage the search engine’s power from a mobile device. Turned out that it wasn’t so easy, since mobile devices (at that time), still had very small screens, slow internet connections, and most importantly, were incompatible with each other. Only few examples like BlackBerrys and Windows Mobile phones, which were very expensive, allowed browsing the web through Google’s search engine without too much trouble. At the same time, Google was also concerned about the growing number mobile phones, and after looking at Microsoft (the only computer giant with success in the mobile sector), the search giant believed it could be left out of the mobile revolution. The main problem was Microsoft had built their own platform, and thus had some control over mobile traffic, whilst other mobile phones did not have a standard (or an OS), and it was nearly impossible to make different portals for each of one of these phones to access Google. The web was not a concern for Google, since the most important standards were already defined, and all web apps worked independently of the hardware. Indeed, Google was facing a big problem.

At the meeting, Rubin showed Page a small Operating System called Android, with the goal of becoming the first standard mobile platform, allowing any carrier and Handset manufacturer adopt this new standard, and focus on what manufacturers did best, the hardware. Rubin’s intentions when calling Page was to get Google’s support; he needed support from a tech giant so that carriers and manufacturers would take his product, Android, seriously. Even if Google only agreed to add its logo behind the mobile OS, Rubin would’ve walked out of the meeting happily; financing Android was not a problem at that point, but it was impossible to make his product mainstream without some serious support. When Page looked at Rubin’s software, what he saw was the solution for all of his problems. If Google could deliver a free platform to the mobile industry, they’d be able to extend their brand even more, and most importantly, be able to offer a clean and simple access to their search engine.

Without a single doubt, Larry Page handed over a bank draft worth 50 million dollars, effectively buying Android, Inc. A new division was built inside Google to develop the new OS and to extend Google services to other mobile platforms, with Andy Rubin at its helm.

From that moment, the press became aware of the news: “Google bought a small startup company, Android, Inc., which is devoted to developing software for mobile platforms”. For the next two years, there were numerous rumors about Google having secret meetings with key players in the mobile industry, which inevitably led to the rumors of a phone carrying Google’s brand. The terms “gPhone” and “Google Phone” became one of the most search keywords, and when Apple officially announced the iPhone, the media speculated even more with the concept.

Without further notice, on November 5^th, 2007 the Open Handset Alliance (OHA) was announced, a business alliance consisting of different firms, from handset manufacturers, network carriers, software developers and chip makers, focused on developing open standards for mobile devices. The first child of this new Alliance was Android, an open source Operating System for mobile devices.

During the first few days, the hype which had built up around the possibility of Google developing its own phone turned into smoke. Steve Ballmer, CEO of Microsoft, stated that Google’s efforts only looked good on paper, while the Symbian Foundation believed it was just another mobile platform based on the Linux kernel. Apple was relieved; people dreamt of a mobile device which would allow them to stay connected to their favorite cloud services (Gmail, Google search, Google Calendar, Google Docs, etc.), and what Google announced was a simple platform, nothing else. However, a week after the announcement, the first Software Development Kit (SDK) was released, and Google announced the first Android Developer Challenge (ADC), promoting the development of apps for its new platform, announcing an investment of ten million dollars only in rewards. Days later, renowned manufacturers like HTC, Motorola or LG announced plans of releasing high-end Android devices. In the following months, Google sent out developers from the Android team to promote the ADC; the lectures and presentation exceeded all expectations, and Google pushed back the deadline. After the last date for submissions, Google announced over 1,800 apps were participating in the Android Developer Challenge.

The first Android phone was expected before 2009, but a statement from HTC caused both Google’s and HTC’s stocks to drop when it was announced that the HTC Dream, the first Android powered smartphone, could be delayed to 2009. Peter Chou, CEO of HTC, faced with the consequences, confirmed the HTC Dream would not be delayed past the last quarter of 2008, and after being approved by the FCC in August, it was released to consumers on October 22^nd.